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Distributed for Seagull Books

The Jew Car

Fourteen Days from Two Decades

1st Edition

Originally published in 1962, Franz Fühmann’s autobiographical story cycle The Jew Car is a classic of German short fiction and an unparalleled examination of the psychology of National Socialism. Each story presents a snapshot of a personal and historical turning point in the life of the narrator, beginning with childhood anti-Semitism and moving to a youthful embrace—and then an ultimate rejection—of Nazi ideology. With scathing irony and hallucinatory intensity, reflections on the nature of memory, and the individual experience of history, the cycle acquires the weight of a novel.

"Fühmann’s work, beginning with The Jew Car, can be read as a great literary self-analysis in the spirit of Freud. Through his work, he not only became conscious of his own thinking as it was seduced by totalitarianism, he also became capable of describing the mechanisms of a fascist upbringing with striking poetic power, transcending all theory." —Die Welt, on the German edition


256 pages | 5 x 8 | © 2019

The German List

Fiction


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Table of Contents

The Jew Car: 1929, The Great Depression
Prayers to Saint Michael: 12 February 1934, Workers’ Uprising in Vienna
The Defence of the Reichenberg Gymnasium: September 1938, Before the Munich Conference
Down the Mountains: October 1938, Occupation of the Sudetenland
A World War Breaks Out: 1 September 1939, Outbreak of the Second World War
Catalaunian Battle: 22 June 1941, Invasion of the Soviet Union
Discoveries on the Map: December 1941, The Battle of Moscow
To Each His Stalingrad: February 1943, The Battle of Stalingrad
Muspilli: 20 July 1944, The Attempt on Hitler’s Life
Plans in the Bramble Den: 8 May 1945, Hitler’s Wehrmacht Capitulates
Rumours: July 1945, Potsdam Conference
Rainy Day in the Caucasus: 21 April 1946, Union of the KPD and SPD
A Day Like Any Other: 10 October 1946, Sentencing at the Nuremberg Trials
For the First Time: Germany: 7 October 1949, The Founding of the German Democratic Republic

Afterword
      Isabel Fargo Cole

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